


Wakes the Bitter Memory

by suitesamba



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage, Recovered Memories, Secret Snarry Swap 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-16 22:44:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16962891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: When Harry bottled up Snape’s memories after viewing them in Dumbledore’s Pensieve, he ended up with an extra memory – one Snape had left forgotten in the Pensieve the night he’d fled the castle. Twelve years later, Harry once again immerses himself in the memories and discovers a secret that can only be fully understood with help from Snape. Fortunately, Snape has recently returned to Hogwarts, and Auror Potter has a reason or two to go to the castle and spend some time with the former headmaster.





	Wakes the Bitter Memory

**Author's Note:**

> A sensitive topic, that I treat from the perspective of an adult Harry discovering he was abused when he views a memory of Albus and Severus discussing the abuse. The focus of the story is on how Harry and Severus re-establish this forgotten relationship, and grow it into something more, and is told from Severus’ perspective twelve years after the Final Battle.
> 
> Title idea credit to badgerlady, from an epigraph from Paradise Lost: 
> 
>  
> 
> _Now conscience wakes despair_  
>  _That slumber’d,—wakes the bitter memory_  
>  _Of what he was, what is, and what must be_  
>  _Worse._
> 
>  
> 
> Prompt No. 26 from eriador117: During 5th year Occlumency lessons, Snape discovers an obliviated memory that Harry doesn't remember - Lockhart raped and abused him. A mentor!Snape fic is fine for this one rather than romantic, but I like both.

Chapter 1

Potter was late.

Not exceptionally late – he’d told Minerva he’d meet me here at half ten, but I’d arrived ten minutes early and Minerva had scuttled off, leaving me to a room full of snoring portraits. Even the usually alert Albus was sleeping, his chin on his chest and his spectacles barely hanging on to his ears, though I had every suspicion he’d be alert and twinkling once Potter arrived and began his interview. 

The entire idea of which was ludicrous. A ridiculous waste of time and resources. I’d been filling in here at Hogwarts for most of the term – a favour for the headmistress – and my application certainly didn’t require the scrutiny given new teaching applicants these days.

My life, after all, was something of an open book.

But here I was, nonetheless, already bored and disgruntled, repaying yet another of the many favours I owed Minerva. I’d begun to believe I’d be paying her back the rest of my life and, grumble as I might, I had no real right to complain.

Still, I had a history here at Hogwarts, a well-documented – albeit chequered – history. That the Board of Governors now required background investigations of all Hogwarts employees before they were employed was a sound practice and long overdue, but what in Merlin’s name could the MLE dig up about me that they didn’t already know?

I’d not been overly surprised to learn Potter would conduct the investigation. Harry Potter had been with the MLE since leaving Hogwarts, and had a vested interest in the school, especially with Lupin’s son now enrolled. The idea of sitting down with him to review my dirty laundry was not appealing in the least, though I’d have felt that way no matter which Auror they’d assigned. I’d known what made Potter tick once, known what made him laugh, what made him cry, but he was as much a stranger to me now as nearly all of my former students – vaguely familiar faces and names that I could only visualise if I imagined them in my Potions classroom, hovering nervously over a steaming cauldron.

While some might wonder why I put up with this unwarranted level of scrutiny, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want this job, almost desperately. Professor of O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. level Potions and Defense. It was the best, most suitable position I’d ever had – and yes, I’m definitely including my year as headmaster, the vivid recollection of which drives me to Dreamless Sleep more often than I’d care to admit.

Minerva’s current offer, however, was topped off with free room and board, comfortable quarters well away from the dungeons and the Slytherin common room, and no extra duties. The use of the state-of-the-art master-level Potions laboratory funded by war reparations from the Malfoy estate was an added bonus. I had every intention of spending a considerable amount of my free time there – the contract she’d offered had no restrictions on my professional academic activities outside of my teaching duties. 

I checked the time again just as Potter, three and a half minutes late, politely rapped on the door, then pushed it open. How considerate of him to knock first – he probably thought I’d be rifling through Minerva’s desk drawers in her absence. Nevertheless, I stood as he entered, out of manners, not deference.

His greeting let me know he understood the difference.

I’d seen him – but not spoken with him – for the first time in years a few months ago when he’d come to Hogwarts to cheer on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team with his godson. I looked him in the eye now as he offered his hand, and covered my trepidation with a scowl.

“Is this really necessary, Potter?” I asked as I shook his hand, then dropped back down into Minerva’s desk chair. At a disadvantage in this meeting, I had naturally chosen the seat of power.

He laughed. 

I used to make him laugh like that, at my sour expressions and impatience, one day, long ago. But there was no spark of familiarity in his eye and, if long-buried memories were reawakened, he didn’t seem at all discomfited. I honestly did not know if I was relieved or disappointed.

I should have had more faith in myself, in my abilities. Lockhart had Obliviated the boy, yet the memory he’d sought to hide had percolated to the surface during our ill-fated Occlumency lessons. I, on the other hand, was no such butcher when it came to memory charms. A Muggle might wish to forget an hour, a day, a horrific experience, even an entire relationship. But a Muggle would be forced to live with the memory, to temper it with drugs or alcohol, to seek psychiatric help.

To ultimately accept what had happened, to move on, to live.

A wizard, however, had other options. 

The interrogation – or interview, as Potter insisted on calling it – ended before it even began. Potter did not comment on my position at Minerva’s desk. Instead, he settled himself on one of the uncomfortable chairs before it, propped his right ankle on his left knee, and leaned back, tilting the chair back on two legs. I frowned, showing my disapproval. Harry Potter might look like a man, but there was still a bit of the boy inside.

In the months we’d been close, I had never seen him this relaxed, this carefree.

Potter barely held back a smile at my reaction. 

“I’ve already cleared you,” he said after staring at me a long moment. I met his gaze, expression as neutral as I could keep it, while he sized me up. “But the Board of Governors expects a personal interview. And to be honest, I’d been thinking about contacting you anyway.”

We stared at each other again. I was both surprised at his candor and intrigued by his demeanor. Professional but relaxed. Unabashedly curious – I could see it in the way he studied me. Calm. Even-tempered. Not the emotional fifteen-year-old I’d once known, attempting to deal with unconscionable abuse while the Dark Lord slowly picked apart his brain and threatened to take from him the ones he loved the most.

No - the boy of fifteen, plagued by visions, tormented by a memory I’d mercilessly uncovered during our forced Occlumency lessons, was nowhere to be seen in this self-assured Auror.

Perhaps – just perhaps – I’d done the right thing, despite my objections, all those years ago.

“You’ve been thinking about contacting me,” I said. It wasn’t a question, though I suspect I’d have been able to direct that interview wherever I’d wanted it to go. I was much more curious to know where _he_ would take it. 

And despite my opinions on the need of the Board of Governors to follow protocol with my application, I could not deny that Harry Potter had been on my mind for a very long time. 

Don’t be mistaken - I wasn’t pining for him. Until this very moment, until I’d been presented with the grown man who no longer reminded me of his father, or worse yet, of myself, I’d thought of him as the student he’d been at Hogwarts. I’d known him best at fifteen, when he was only a boy, despite the cares and responsibilities piled on him at that age. I’d been accused of, and had indeed witnessed, some incredibly deviant acts, but I drew a firm line when it came to students and children. Death Eaters craved power and were willing to grovel at the feet of their leader to secure it, but this didn’t make them sexual deviants by default.

No, there were worse sorts of predators lurking about to threaten our youth. Innocent-looking adults who wore periwinkle blue and flashed brilliant smiles, who spoke of marvelous adventures and gave detentions in their offices, keeping the ambient temperature high and the lights unusually low. Detaining students late into the evening until they were tired, only half-awake.

Sleepy and pliant. Less able to think clearly, to put up a fight.

“Do you read the _Prophet_?” Potter asked, pulling me away from my thoughts. 

I leaned back and studied him, wondering where he was going but careful not to look like I cared. “I stay informed.”

“Oh, I imagine you do,” he said, again with that almost smile. He lowered his chair to all four legs, and leaned forward, glancing at the portrait wall. I suspected Albus was feigning sleep but listening to every word, but Potter seemed to give him no mind. “You know about Hermione’s book, then?”

Where was he going? Of course I knew about Granger’s book. She’d interviewed me several times over the past five years, as she had nearly everyone who’d been involved in the events of those last years of the Dark Lord’s regime. Surely Potter knew this. Was he as inept at conversation as he seemed?

I narrowed my eyes, feigning annoyance. “The book she’s been attempting to write for five years?” I asked. “I thought she’d given up on it once she realised how many Weasleys she’d have to interview.”

“Hey, stop that,” Potter admonished, rather gently, not rising to the bait. “How do you know about that, anyway? It’s not like it made the _Prophet_.”

How did I know that Hermione Granger had broken the heart of two of the Weasley brothers and had her heart broken by a third? Ah – perhaps because one of them might have broken my heart as well, had I a heart to break.

I raised an eyebrow, and he let it drop. He had something else on his mind now, and I settled back in my chair, arms crossed on my belly, waiting.

He stood and walked over to Albus’ portrait and stared at it for a moment before turning back to me. “They’re releasing the book this summer,” he said. “There’s a release party – I promised Hermione I’d come, and that I’d not come alone.” He paused, gave a little shrug, as if apologizing. “I’d like you to come. I’m expecting it to be horribly dull – we can stir things up a bit.”

It was the last thing I’d expected to hear from him, and I was fairly confident it wasn’t what he really wanted to say to me at all.

“You are alone with me for the first time since your childhood and all you can think to do is invite me to a party?” I sputtered. “Where are the questions about your mother? About Albus? About how I survived when you watched that snake rip me into shreds? At the very least you could press me about how I know about Granger’s love life. But no – you look me in the eye and instead invite me to a party! What has become of you, Mr Potter?” 

Behind Harry’s back, Albus opened both eyes. I scowled at him.

Potter took a step toward me. “You’ll go, then?”

The request was ludicrous. Where was my sarcastic retort? _No, Mr Potter, I will not. This is the headmistress’s office, not Madam Puddifoot’s tea shop!_

We stared at each other for several seconds until I sighed in resignation and gestured at his chair.

“Sit down Potter. I’d like to better understand your intentions before I commit to a social engagement with you.”

What the hell was I thinking? 

But he smiled at me as he sat back down, and I swear to Merlin those green eyes were twinkling.

Chapter 2

I learned quite a bit about this grown up Harry Potter in the hour we spent together in Minerva’s office that day. Quite a bit more than he could possibly have learned about me.

Or so I’d thought.

My miscalculation was forgetting the uniform. The scarlet robes on Harry Potter screamed Gryffindor to me, there in the headmistress’s office in Hogwarts. But it was a trained and seasoned Auror who sat before me, observing me as I spoke, careful and measured as I was. He had something on his mind, something he was keeping from me.

He did ask about his mother. He held the question until we’d spent some time on the years since the Battle. He was unapologetic about keeping his distance from me, and from Hogwarts. He’d lived with Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin until the boy started at Hogwarts, thrown into parenting before he turned eighteen. He’d studied for his N.E.W.T.s, sat them at Hogwarts a year after the Battle, then joined the Aurors. He claimed there wasn’t much else to tell. Parenting had taken up any free time he had. He remained close to the Weasleys who were, and always would be, his family, despite his failure to find a spouse and partner from their number, and they’d become Teddy and Andromeda’s family as well.

I’d known most of this – peripherally at least. My short-lived but intense relationship with Charlie Weasley had given me an open window into the lives of the entire family after the war. It wasn’t an altogether pretty picture. George suffered night terrors, Molly found solace in firewhisky, and Ron, George and Charlie all lost their hearts – at various times – to Hermione Granger, who, in the end, married Lee Jordan. Ginevra left the family behind and moved to the States to play Quidditch, which caused her mother so much distress that Charlie cashed in his savings and purchased an international Floo connection for the Burrow. 

I admit I feigned interest in the affairs of the Weasleys, or at the very least was open to commiserating with Charlie over the single-malt scotch he favoured. His melancholic fits were often the prelude to rigorous and inventive sex as he worked out his grief and his anger on his more than willing partner. I didn’t care that he was an equal-opportunity lover, as comfortable with women as with men, or that he’d slept with Hermione Granger on the night Ronald had married a witch seven years his senior who worked with his father at the Ministry. What I cared about was that he saw me as a lover, not a Death Eater, and cared less about my chequered past than about my cock and my willingness to take charge in the bedroom.

The alcohol he imbibed loosened his tongue, and I’d coax stories from him according to my mood. If I was in the mood to bottom, I liked him angry, aggressive, pushing the edges of the boundaries I’d set for him. But if I wanted a piece of his firm arse, I’d let him talk about his lost brother, or how the Granger girl had stolen his heart then broken it into pieces, then I’d make him forget his sorrow with a glorious arse pounding after which he’d sleep deeply while I connected the freckles on his back and spun them into galaxies.

The convenient affair ended soon after I let him bugger me nearly senseless after he drunkenly admitted he harboured a lingering lust for Harry Potter. We were already playing a dangerous game, a game of power, of control, where we took advantage of the other to satisfy our mutual needs. But what passed for my conscience sent me into a nagging guilt trip at taking advantage of Charlie’s lust for someone else.

Someone, especially, like Harry Potter.

I’ll say it again - I didn’t lust for Potter, not before he was a grown man of nearly thirty. I’d known him personally only as a struggling teenager, working his way through denial, grief and rage that one of his professors had abused him in the most vile of ways. That the rage was directed more at me than at the abuser in the beginning was unsurprising. He didn’t trust me – not then, anyway – and it was far easier to pass the whole thing off as me meddling with his memories, planting something false, than to accept what had actually happened when he was a child of twelve, serving a detention with Gilderoy Lockhart, signing photographs in his over-warm office late one night, far past curfew.

He doesn’t remember it now. 

On that day of our reacquaintance, as he tied up my mandated investigation, he wanted to know about me, about what I’d done in the years between the Battle and my return to Hogwarts. He seemed genuinely interested – curious – and listened attentively. I wasn’t completely honest with him. I didn’t tell him about the years I’d spent drinking too much, visiting Muggle bars and feeding my long-denied libido and desire to control, rather than be controlled. I didn’t tell him about my depression, my regrets, how long it took to come to terms with surviving what I’d always known would be my end. 

And of course, I didn’t tell him about Charlie Weasley.

He likely knew many of these things anyway, as he’d apparently conducted a thorough background check prior to this meeting. But the Ministry had always been a bit blind to what went on when wizards played at blending in in the Muggle world. I’d treated my depression with my own brand of therapy and potions, never consulting anyone who’d make a report. And as for Charlie Weasley – we’d been discreet enough, though it was indeed possible someone might have noticed us drinking together a time or two at the Hog’s Head, well after decent folk were in bed.

If Potter noted my omissions, he didn’t show his hand. 

Instead, he asked me – at last, inevitably – about his mum. Buying a few moments to get my thoughts together, I stood, went to the sideboard, and broke out Minerva’s best scotch. I poured us each a good measure. Discussing first loves and broken hearts merited a little liquid courage.

Memories are complicated. Memory magic even more so. Memories can be tricked, re-shaped, by the human mind even without the benefit of magic. Wizards quantify memories, separate them out into individual strands, remove them to study them in a Pensieve, or protect them and bottle them up in dazzling crystal vials. A memory so removed still exists in the donor, though less immediately accessible. The brain’s indexing is tricked when a memory is removed for study or protection, but the system quickly repairs itself when the strand is restored. When I removed memories prior to our Occlumency lessons, I did so not to prevent Potter access to them, but to prevent my brain from firing up to him anything that would make me seem weak, that would make him sympathise with my plight, or worse yet, pity me. 

Potter would not have known any of this when he was a boy, but as a trained Auror, he would know that the memories I’d given him while I lay dying in the Shrieking Shack would now be more difficult for me to access, to call up at will.

I sipped at the scotch and gathered my thoughts. 

“I bottled them up and stored them away a long time ago.” His voice was quiet, more serious than I’d heard it before. “But I moved into my own place last month and found them again. I’ve been a bit obsessive about watching them lately.” He studied the drink in his hand, then looked at me and smiled. “I’m not much like her, am I?”

“I don’t know you well enough now to say,” I answered honestly. In those short months during his fifth year, as the Occlumency lessons evolved into something more personal, I would have agreed with him. He wasn’t at all like the Lily I’d called my friend. He was a boy tormented, his mind linked to the Dark Lord’s, tortured by Umbridge, shut off from Dumbledore, the mentor whom he’d always trusted to guide and protect him. I became, through chance or fate, for that short time, a replacement for Dumbledore, joining the ranks of his misbegotten mentors – the werewolf, the wrongly accused madman, the chess master, and the Death Eater. None of us fathers, all of us flawed.

No, that boy of 15 was not like his mother, but could he have been had she not been snatched from his life all the years before? _Would_ he have been?

“Well, we’ll have to get to know each other better, then,” he said. He leaned forward, surprising me with his proximity as he smoothly invaded my personal space and pressed something into my hand. “I’m sorry I kept these so long,” he said as he closed my fingers around a crystal vial that could only contain one thing.

That night, I poured the memories out into my Pensieve. I’d been dying when I’d gifted them to him, desperate to deliver the critical message from Albus while I still breathed, while there was still time. I’d forced them out, wandless, wordless, willing my magic to choose what he needed. I’d thought of Lily less often in the ensuing years. The circumstances of my unexpected survival had redirected my thoughts, my efforts, my life. She was no longer the epicenter of my existence, not since my death and rebirth, not since her son rid our world of Voldemort with that fateful Expelliarmus.

After the War, after Voldemort, after my own death, I’d finally been able to let her go.

I lost myself in her memory that evening, listened to the sound of her laugh, marveled at the colour of her eyes. But the memories didn’t feel like mine anymore. My anger had been replaced by a melancholy that hadn’t been there before, a wistful sadness I’d not felt as a child watching her play, or as a misfit Slytherin forced to choose sides. As I returned the memories, strand by precious strand, Lily’s eyes were just as green, just as beautiful as I remembered, but changed nonetheless. It was her face, her hair, the mischievous smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth, but behind her eyes was the soul of her motherless child, surveying this piece of her world.

 _My_ piece of her world. The stamp she’d made upon it.

And I knew then that Harry Potter had spent many hours immersed in these memories, studying his mother, watching her, loving her from the other side of time. And that every memory of her was also a memory of me.

Paradigm shifted, I stared out my window over the grounds of Hogwarts, through the cool wash of moonlight, to the shimmer of the lake and the weak pinpoints of stars above. I wanted to know more – about Potter, about what was motivating him now to approach me with such familiarity after all these years. Something was off – something troubled me – and I feared I had only myself to blame.

For reordering his memories when he was a boy of fifteen. For removing the source of his pain, removing the weight of the memory, the one I had inadvertently restored, that was holding him down, causing him even more pain. And much later, as I lay dying, for giving him something even worse. Odd that Albus had been the one to insist that I take away the memory of the abuse he’d suffered at Gilderoy Lockhart’s hand. _The boy is getting too close to you, Severus. Too dependent on you. Voldemort will know. He’ll see it through Harry’s eyes if not through your own. It is too early, Severus. Far too early._

Odd because of what he made me vow to tell the boy when the time was right. That in order to permanently dispatch the Dark Lord, he himself, Harry Potter, must die.

Chapter 3

As he’d left my presence that day without my verbal commitment to see him again, I felt it was up to him to pursue the matter of Granger’s book party – or not. A short week later, I wasn’t surprised to see his name on the list of Ministry testers for the Defense O.W.L.s. As the students’ professor, my role was one of organisation and administration only. In short, I sat outside the testing rooms, made sure that each student had filled out the appropriate testing application forms correctly, and, ostensibly, offered a bit of moral support as they steeled themselves for the practicals.

Potter was one of the Ministry team overseeing the testing. He was one of two duelers, Ministry personnel assigned to assess an O.W.L. contender’s defense skills by way of a duel. I shook my head in commiseration with the students who would walk into the testing room to discover they’d be dueling Harry Potter. 

The Slytherins were up the first day, and both students and testers managed to survive the ordeal. Potter, who’d been professionally cordial throughout the afternoon, hung back when the others left for some free time before dinner. 

“I’ve reviewed test results for the Ministry files for three years,” he said, watching me as I rolled up several sheets of parchment and sent them to the headmistress's office. ”I’ve never seen an entire class pass their practicals before.”

“Oh?” I’d known that, of course. I’d reviewed the records from the past five years when I’d taken this position, determined to prove my worth.

“You knew that,” he said, eyes not leaving my face as he studied my reaction. “Of course you knew that – you’d make it your business to know what the prior pass rates were.” He stared at me, trying to read my expression. “Alright – was that your best group?”

“You’ll have to tell me when you finish with the rest of them,” I said. 

He readily seized the small opening I’d inadvertently given him.

“Friday, then?” he said, hardly containing his smile. “I’m staying through Saturday to chaperon the first-years on their Hogsmeade outing.”

The annual first and second years’ end-of-year outing to Hogsmeade, introduced several years ago, was a highly anticipated school event but had driven the faculty chaperones nearly insane. Minerva had had the brilliant idea of recruiting parent volunteers and requiring one adult for every two children. “Do you have any idea what you’re in for?” I asked, shuddering in sympathy.

“I helped supervise outings at Teddy’s primary,” Harry answered, grinning. “It was something like herding cats.”

“In Zonko’s,” I added, raising an eyebrow.

“Can’t be worse than ten seven-year-olds at the London zoo,” Harry replied. He leaned against the wall across the corridor as I stood and tucked my chair back under the table. “So – Friday?”

“A drink in my quarters,” I said, not giving him the opportunity to suggest something more public. “After dinner in the Great Hall. I’m sure Minerva will accommodate you at the head table.”

Friday seemed a long way off on that Monday afternoon, but as I was responsible for the logistics around two classes – Potions and Defense – I had precious little time to spend on anticipation. Potter didn’t comment again about the students he tested, not even the Gryffindors, who were, surprisingly, my best group this year. I, however, was forced to listen to the nervous chatter of the students awaiting their practicals. By the second day, they all knew that they had an even chance of having to duel Harry Potter. 

“My brother tested last year,” said one of the Ravenclaws on Wednesday as they nervously waited their turns. “The students didn’t have to go up against _Harry Potter_!”

“Mr Potter is no more capable of jinxing you than any of the other officials,” I said, nipping the whinging in the bud. “You will be asked to demonstrate spells at which you should be proficient, then prove your mettle in a duel. You have practiced against me, Mr Foster. Do you really believe Mr Potter more capable than your professor?”

The student gaped at me and I let a smile slide across my face and disappear before the student could interpret what it meant. 

“Harry Potter…Potter…he…he defeated the Dark Lord…” the student stammered. “You’re awfully good, Professor Snape. Really! But….”

“Harry Potter defeated _Voldemort_ because he knew his weakness, and Voldemort did not,” I clarified for him. “Not because he was more powerful.” All the students were looking at me now, and their incessant chatter had ceased. “What Potter was was exceedingly brave and stupidly selfless.”

One of the girls nudged the boy beside her. “Gryffindor!” she said in a loud whisper.

“Ah- then I suppose a Gryffindor was precisely what we needed at the time,” I said. “And I will make sure that you are paired with Mr Potter so you can thank him personally.”

I held her gaze an extra second or two, then pretended to study the list before me. I was generally not given to outbursts of this sort, especially with my students.

Ravenclaws are not necessarily known for their bravery, or their stupidity, but I’d opened a door of familiarity now and one of them, a boy whose intelligence overpowered all other facets of his personality and made him nearly unbearable, spoke then. His voice, as always, was nearly void of inflection.

“Some people say Harry Potter left you there to die,” he said. “They claim he saw the snake strike you, but he left you on that filthy floor to bleed out.” 

The words he had used – “filthy floor to bleed out” – were so obviously not his own. 

The words, in his flat, matter-of-fact cadence, hung in the air. He may as well have been commenting on the weather, or answering one of Binns’ questions on the Goblin wars. The other students turned as one to stare at their classmate. They looked both horrified and fascinated, passersby staring at a train wreck. I could have been one of them. I, too, stared at the boy, speechless. No one had ever dared, not in my presence, to voice those words, that thought. I owed the boy no explanation, nor the other Ravenclaws whose focus had now turned to me. Still, I did not want to leave the statement uncontested, no matter that Harry Potter had done exactly what the boy had claimed. 

Potter had done exactly what he _had_ to do.

I took my time, narrowing my gaze and staring at the boy. He remained perfectly unfazed, unaware of the social trespass he’d just committed.

“Some people?” I asked, my voice deceptively pleasant. “Do tell – which people are those?”

The boy shrugged. “My mum heard it from her brother at the Ministry. And this summer, I heard some fourth-years talking about it in Diagon Alley. And Pro -”

He swallowed the syllable quickly and shrugged again.

“Go on,” I urged. “Someone else?”

He shook his head and quickly pulled out his Defense textbook. 

I let him be – he’d said too much, and had finally realised it. The matter would remain a whispered rumour, unsubstantiated. Potter – Granger – Weasley. All of them had thought I was beyond hope, my injuries too severe for any resources available to them. They were haggard, exhausted, pushed to their limits already. I’d never blamed them – not then, not later. Odd – I wasn’t the most forgiving of people.

For all Harry Potter had known, I’d been dead before he left the room.

“Harry Potter was a boy of seventeen – not much older than you are now,” I said, as if he and I were the only two people in the room. “He had just spent nearly a year on the run, being chased by snatchers, Death Eaters, corrupt Ministry officials and Voldemort himself. He was about to face the Dark Lord for the final time. He thought I was already dead.” I let that statement hang there a moment, then lowered my voice and continued. “And had he tried some stupidly heroic effort to bind my wounds or administer a potion or stuff a bezoar down what was left of my throat, I would – had I even a small slice of strength or consciousness – have instructed him to _get the hell on dispensing with Voldemort and leave me be._ ”

You could have heard a doxy breathe in the drafty corridor. I, Severus Snape, who never spoke of the war or my role in it, who daily espoused a pick-up-the-pieces-and-get-on-with-it attitude, had just revealed to a group of Ravenclaw fifth-years what I’d never spoken aloud to anyone, ever.

I admit I briefly considered mass Obliviation, but a Ministry official conveniently appeared to signal me to send in the first two students.

By dinner, it was all over the school.

Minerva called me in to her office during rounds that evening to ask me to share the memory of the encounter, as the versions being passed around in the corridors varied from me battling off Potter while he tried to bind my wounds, to Potter holding my torn neck together with bare, bloody hands while Granger forced a bezoar down my throat.

At ten o’clock, Harry Potter showed up at my door. In his casual clothing, without the armour of his Auror’s robes, he looked more human, more vulnerable and, oddly, more a man.

“Which version did you hear?” I asked without preamble, turning away from the door but leaving it open so he could choose to follow me inside – or not. I pulled out the scotch, found it nearly empty, so reached for the firewhiskey instead. “Did I battle you off with wandless magic while you tried to wrap your Gryffindor scarf around my neck?” I looked up, and finding him only a step or two away, pushed a glass into his hands. “Or did Ms Granger pull out a potions laboratory from her magic bag and whip up antivenin and a blood-replenishing potion while you held my neck closed with your teeth, leaving your hands free to assist her?”

He almost smiled. He was definitely more relaxed than I, despite an almost enticing aura of vulnerability. 

“I’m pretty used to this, you know,” he said. He took a sip of the firewhisky and let his eyes wander about my quarters. “People act like I’m not even here – like I can’t hear them whisper when a father tells his kid that nothing can kill me, or someone else praises me, but her friend reminds her that it took me a whole year before I was brave enough to come forward and face Voldemort, and that hundreds of people died in that year.”

I turned my back and walked into my sitting room, sinking onto the sofa, digesting what he’d said. I spent my time with Hogwarts students and faculty and, before returning here, with as little exposure to the outside world as possible. People tended to fear me, or revile me, and didn’t dare speak their minds in my presence. 

“Hey.” I felt him settle on the sofa beside me, closer to me than our recent reacquaintance merited. “All right – yeah. I did hear a few things around the castle today. But none of it made any impression at all considering I heard it right from the source this morning.”

Well fuck. 

I downed the firewhisky in a swallow, then fell into an embarrassing coughing fit as the inferior liquor burned my throat.

“Easy, there.” Potter took my glass from me, spelled it full of water and handed it back. “Merlin, Professor. It was like chirping crickets out there in the corridor with all that chattering while we were setting up. When it suddenly got perfectly quiet, I looked out to see what was going on.” 

I gave what I hoped passed for a disinterested _hmph_.

Potter let out an exasperated huff and picked up his drink from where he’d placed it on the end table when he’d rescued mine. He took a bracing gulp, hissing as the burn trickled down his throat, then shook his head.

“You’re embarrassed that I heard what I heard, aren’t you?”

When I didn’t reply, he let a quiet moment pass, then spoke more softly. “You really have no idea, do you?”

“Oh, I have many ideas,” I muttered. “Most of which I’d like to keep to myself.”

“You git,” he said, without venom. “You self-absorbed _git_. All this time – all these _years_ \- _I’ve_ been embarrassed. Afraid to face you because I’d left you there. I thought you were dead, beyond hope. Merlin, Snape – you were a fucking _mess_! And what you did – giving me those memories as you were _dying_ \- I was sure it had killed you. That the effort cost you everything you had and more. It can’t surprise you to know that you were about the last thing on my mind that night, after your dramatic little exit earlier, anyway. I just wanted to stay out of your way as long as I could. I didn’t even know you’d made it until after I got back from the Ministry the next day. And I – I was happy. I remember hugging Hermione, and then I fell asleep for about three days, and it was weeks later that I started to think about it. About what you thought of me for just taking those memories from you, and leaving you there like that on that filthy floor – after all you’d done.” 

“You had no idea what I had done,” I reminded him. 

“No, not then. I didn’t then,” he agreed. “It didn’t keep me from feeling guilty later, though. So, what you told those kids today - it was exactly what I needed to hear, even after all these years.” 

I didn’t want to be having this conversation, or any conversation, at this time of night and in this state of mind. He was right – I was embarrassed that he’d overheard my little speech, though not embarrassed now that I’d not once considered the scenario from his perspective. I closed my eyes and wondered how long he’d sit there beside me if I didn’t say another word.

Five minutes.

Finally, the cushions beside me shifted as he got to his feet.

“You know this is about me, right? Not you? I’m the one they’re criticizing. They’re forgetting we hated each other, that you were headmaster because Voldemort himself appointed you. Why should I have helped you when you never showed me anything but vitriol? Merlin, Snape – it wasn’t like I’d just seen _Dumbledore’s_ neck ripped open by a snake! Until I poured out your memories into that Pensieve and took a nosedive in, you were the enemy.”

I didn’t even open my eyes and a minute later he sighed.

“You’re not getting out of Friday,” he said. “I’ve got something we need to discuss.”

He left without another word and I couldn’t help but wonder how that horrible year would have played out if he hadn’t hated me. If he’d trusted me as he had those few short months his fifth year when I was the only adult at Hogwarts who felt he deserved the truth.

Chapter 4

More than once the next two days, I wondered what he was saving to discuss on Friday. I doubted it would be anything as inane as details about Granger’s book publication party, though I wouldn’t exactly put it past them to try to coerce me to participate in a group interview or panel or, Merlin help me, a group photograph. I imagined a sort of quiz show, Death Eaters against the Order of the Phoenix, with me as the pivot point – a functional member of both teams who could swoop in for the save on either side.

He didn’t speak privately to me after testing on Thursday or Friday, though we exchanged the kind of professional pleasantries expected of the situation. As I’d hoped and expected, each of my students earned his or her Defense O.W.L., and spirits were high at the Friday evening meal. It had been a long week and, with the stress of testing over and term break just around the corner, the students were particularly raucous.

I tried to focus on my meal and the conversation around me and not on Potter’s absence. I’d suggested he join the evening meal, but he hadn’t committed to it. I’d return to my quarters after dinner and make myself a stiff drink. If Potter showed up, I’d make a second to share. If not, I’d enjoy a quiet weekend in with my research and put our brief reacquaintance behind me. 

But he was there waiting when I returned to my rooms, leaning against the wall beside my door, dressed in denims and a short-sleeve button-down, open at the neck. He was holding the _Prophet_ , folded to an interior page, and seemed absorbed in an article.

“I’m a bit early,” he said, folding the paper and tucking it into his back pocket. “Hope you don’t mind.”

I gave him a disinterested look as I let myself in. I pointed to the sideboard, told him to help himself, then left him to his own devices while I took my time changing out of my teaching robes.

I found him studying a painting when I emerged a few minutes later. It was a goodbye gift of sorts from Charlie Weasley, a painting one of his friends had done of dragons soaring over the Great Lake. The dragons were certainly familiar to Potter – the very four that had been brought to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament. But it wasn’t the dragons that had appealed to me as much as the nearly abstract style, the splashes of colour that drew out the shadows. It was more a landscape, a portrait of Hogwarts and her environs, than a painting of dragons.

I wondered if Potter had seen the painting in Weasley’s flat, and found I didn’t care much at all if he had.

He looked over at me as I picked up the drink he’d poured for me, but he turned away from the painting without comment.

“So,” he said, not giving me time to settle into a chair or offer a greeting. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

I held in the bark of laughter that wanted to escape and raised an eyebrow without comment. This was his little party and I wasn’t going to make it easier for him by admitting that I myself had been anything but honest with him. 

“I asked to be assigned to the Hogwarts background checks when I heard you were up for a permanent position.”

Surprising, but not shocking. I looked at him, waiting, features even.

“And then Santiago got pulled off the O.W.L. testing team because of a write-up so I volunteered to take her place.”

I blinked. I tried to seem uninterested, though I was anything but.

I moved to the wingback I favoured and sat, crossing my legs and taking a sip of the drink he’d handed me. “Go on,” I said, retaining eye contact. He didn’t look terribly uncomfortable or embarrassed to admit that his presence at Hogwarts this past week was no coincidence.

“I wanted to return the memories,” he began.

“Which you’ve returned already,” I reminded him. I didn’t point out that he’d had them for a dozen years.

“Right.” He looked at me over his drink. He had stubble on his cheeks and a prominent Adam’s apple. The scar on his forehead was covered with a tidier fringe than I remembered. “You’re not as scary as I remember,” he said.

“And you’re not as scared,” I returned, dryly.

He glanced back at the painting. “That painting was Charlie Weasley’s,” he said, without accusation. “That’s how you know about Hermione.”

Ah. He hadn’t known about Charlie. He’d recognised the painting and he’d quickly put the other pieces together. He’d hidden his surprise at finding Charlie’s painting in my sitting room, and the shock he must have felt that there had been something between us. 

“I’m rather surprised you didn’t dig him up during your little investigation.”

He didn’t bristle at the ‘little’ – just shrugged. “I didn’t spend a lot of time on your romantic connections – I suppose I was convinced you were a one-woman man.” 

“I am.” I watched his face over my scotch, willing to bide my time until he revealed what was behind this visit and, indeed, this entire effort to intrude in my hitherto peaceful life.

He stared at me and I noted that his eyes, his expression, gave away nothing. Ten years with the Aurors had certainly taught him the control he’d so lacked as a child.

But finally, he smiled. “Noted,” he said. “One _woman_. Nice to know Hermione didn’t break your heart, too.”

I shook my head. “I assume your heart weathered the storm as well.”

He smiled. “Yeah. I’m a no-woman kind of bloke myself.”

I had, on occasion, skimmed past conjectures in the _Prophet_ alluding to Potter’s sexuality. It hadn’t interested me, as prurient matters not relating to my immediate needs seldom did. I let the statement go without comment. We didn’t need to have a bonding moment based on our shared preference for the male gender. I had mentally acknowledged him as male, adult and attractive. But I had an idea he wanted something altogether different from me.

“Are you planning to get to the point today, Mr Potter?” I asked, forcing a show of impatience.

“I wanted to talk to you about the memories I returned,” he said. “The day after the Battle, I went back to your office and bottled them up, since I’d left them in your Pensieve and I knew that someone else would be using that office before too long. I didn’t have a Pensieve of my own, so I tucked the bottles away in my sock drawer for years and forgot about them. But when I started packing up to move, after Teddy came here, I found them again, and by then I could afford a Pensieve. But there’s one particular memory I’m not sure about – one that I don’t recall ever seeing before. I don’t think you meant for me to have it.”

I frowned at him. What was he talking about? He’d returned the memories and there’d been nothing surprising there, nothing I hadn’t meant for Potter to see.

“Oh – I didn’t return that one. I’ve got it right here. Near as I can figure, it was already in the Pensieve when I got up to your office that night to use it.”

Already in the Pensieve.

I stared at Potter. 

A memory – one not meant for Potter – left in my Pensieve all those years ago.

What had I been examining before Potter and his friends broke into the castle? What would have been on my mind in those final hours of those final days? As impossible news of him breaking into Gringotts and escaping on a dragon reached the castle? I remember thinking that he’d pressed his luck too many times, that he was only a boy of seventeen, up against the darkest of evils in this world. 

And then I remembered.

It was Albus’ memory, one he’d given me at my request after he’d been cursed, so I’d always have it if it ever came to – well, to this.

Potter knew. Knew about Lockhart. Knew that a small slice of his life was missing. Had seen my anguish at having to erase the only time we’d ever spent as something less than enemies.

“Why don’t we take a look?” Potter said. He glanced around the room and I gave him the most disinterested look I could muster, but stood and walked stiffly to the shelves behind the sofa and extracted my Pensieve from the lowest shelf. 

He could be bluffing. It was certainly possible that he wanted me to see something else – perhaps the final confrontation with the Dark Lord, the impassioned speech he made in my defense. But I needed time, and if the memory was indeed the one I believed it to be, I would live it again, with Potter awake, aware and at my side, and emerge from the past into my quarters to a Harry Potter unveiled.

I watched as he pulled a vial from his pocket and uncorked it. He let the almost-liquid fall into the Pensieve, glanced at me, then prodded it gently with the tip of his wand.

Albus’ timeless face rose above the bowl then melted back into the wispy cloud of memory.

With face devoid of emotion, I bent forward, not waiting for Potter’s leave.

I landed on my feet in my old dungeon quarters. A fire was roaring in the grate and the light was dim. Albus, clearly wearing the cares of those last years as headmaster but with unblemished hand, was seated in my favourite chair – the wingback with the ottoman facing the sofa. A younger, more sallow version of myself faced him from behind the sofa which fronted the fireplace.

“You will do it tonight, Severus. You can’t wait any longer. It has already gone on far longer than advisable.” I could almost recite the words with him, and my reaction at hearing them again evoked the same gut-wrenching despair it had all those years ago.

“It will change everything,” I said. 

I looked horrible, that version of me in the first year of the Dark Lord’s return. Sallow and pinched, angry and desperate.

“It must change everything. You can’t go on like this. Neither of you.”

Potter had landed beside me, but walked around the sofa to stand beside Albus. His eyes, naturally, were focused on the sofa where the fifteen-year-old version of himself lay sleeping. He’d been sleeping lightly when Albus arrived, tucked under a quilt I’d draped over him when he’d drifted off, but Albus had laid a hand on his head and coaxed him into a deep sleep from which he wouldn’t wake without assistance. I remembered how Albus’ hand had lingered there, on Potter’s forehead, over his scar. It was the closest he’d been to the child all year, the only touch he’d allowed himself.

My younger self turned his back and strode to the kitchen and pointed his wand at the kettle.

“Tea, Albus?”

“Certainly.” 

I watched Albus wait there in the warm chair by the fire. He kept his hands folded in his lap and his eyes on the sleeping boy. His expression was thoughtful and a bit sorrowful, and I knew he would never show that face to the man in the kitchen. 

I returned with the tea service and placed it on the table. Albus helped himself, taking his time to prepare his mug, then settling back to warm his hands around it and watch me. I sat in the only other chair in the room – a rocker – and remained perfectly still. I remembered how difficult it had been to sit ramrod straight in that chair instead of rocking slowly back and forth as I often did when the boy fell asleep after reporting for what everyone thought were Occlumency lessons.

Potter, with the familiarity of someone who’d visited this scene often, came over to stand beside me behind the sofa. “I looked drugged,” he said, very quietly.

I hadn’t drugged the boy, but ignored him in favour of paying close attention as the memory played out. When this was over, and we were alone in my quarters again, there would be a confrontation, and I needed all the information I could gather about what he knew and what he didn’t know. 

What was I prepared to give away? What did he already know?

“He wants this, Severus. He wants the memory erased again. He’s made his wishes on the matter clear.”

“He does not understand the consequences.”

“What consequences, Severus? That you remove a memory that is causing him constant torment? A memory so disturbing that he’s yet to share it with anyone? The boy sees you as a mentor, Severus. You have taken the place I was forced to vacate, but his closeness to you puts you in the same danger it places me. You have barely made any progress at all with his Occlumency. The Dark Lord will….”

“We haven’t attempted Occlumency in more than a month, Albus! The boy is trying - _trying_ \- to deal with having been abused and Obliviated by a Hogwarts professor. Here – in this castle. In the only place in the world he felt safe. At least he is not actively trying to connect with the Dark Lord now.”

“He is unprotected, Severus. You must do it.”

“Who will he have then?” I shot back. “Who will he turn to when you’re forced out of here, Albus?” 

Albus sighed and briefly closed his eyes.

“You know it’s only a matter of time. You’ll be forced out of your position before the end of the year.”

“He will have his friends,” Albus answered. “They have always come through in the past.”

I remembered this conversation, my last, desperate attempt to convince Albus to change his mind. I didn’t have to heed the wishes of Potter. He was my student, and I could simply refuse to modify his memory. I could claim any number of reasons, all of them valid, not least of which was that memory modification was dangerous and more could be lost, or damaged, than intended. 

“He needs an adult in his life,” I protested.

Albus raised an eyebrow. “Severus…”

“Black is hardly an adult, and is incapable of mentoring Potter,” I growled. “He’s a child himself.”

“He’s Harry’s godfather. He has legal responsibility for Harry.”

“Then why hasn’t Harry told him?” I retorted. “If they are so close and he is so trustworthy, why hasn’t Harry confided in him?”

“You said it yourself, Severus. He’s confided in no one else. No one. Not his friends, nor the Weasleys, nor his godfather. He’s traumatised.”

“Of course he is traumatised! He was sexually abused by a staff member and then Obliviated! And he has known this for only two months, Albus. He needs more time.” 

My former self’s voice broke and I saw Potter watching him closely, watching how his gaze traveled to the sleeping boy on the couch, then jerked away to focus again on Albus. I could see the anguish on my face, and reminded myself how seldom I ever let emotions other than anger rise so close to the surface. The boy had affected me, had changed me in those two short months in ways I could never have anticipated. James Potter’s hated offspring had morphed at last into Lily’s child. Not a copy of Lily, never to be mistaken for her, but a piece and part of her nonetheless. 

And in those weeks leading up to this fateful evening, I learned, to my unsettling disbelief, that he reminded me much more of myself than of James Potter.

“We don’t have more time,” Albus said. I think I heard the regret in his voice now that I hadn’t heard all those years ago. He watched Potter’s chest rise and fall evenly as he continued the sleep of the spelled on the sofa. “He sees what Voldemort is seeing, Severus. And if that is true, as I believe it to be, then isn’t it equally likely that Voldemort sees what _he_ sees?”

I’d given in. I’d done the deed while he lay sleeping. I’d scrambled the memory of the twelve-year-old boy on his knees in front of his perverted professor, crying, back ramrod straight as he trembled – not in fear, but in rage. Lockhart, with the golden hair and wide smile and periwinkle robes. Lockhart holding onto the thin shoulder with one hand, training his wand on him with the other as he softly spoke.

“There’s a good boy – a very good boy, indeed. Do as I tell you and Miss Granger and Mr Weasley will never have to serve detention with me, will they? We wouldn’t want them to see you like this, would we, Harry? Kneeling there, so eager, so willing, to ready to please me….”

In the memory I’d uncovered during our Occlumency lessons, the boy had jerked at his words, stared up, tears streaming, and said “I’m not. I’m not those things.”

“Ah,” Lockhart had answered. “Well, then – go on, then. I’ll call in Miss Granger, first. She made quite a mess today in class, didn’t she, with those Cornish pixies? A detention might set her straight again. I’ve seen her staring at me in class, eyes bright with such well-deserved admiration. She’s longing to know me better, Harry, isn’t she? Hmm?”

I’d taken away that painful, damning memory, and I’d taken with it the memory of me uncovering it as I invaded his mind when he failed to shield it, yet again, from my intrusion. And I’d taken everything that followed. His rage, his accusations. Accusing me of planting false memories, of being the abuser, the pervert. I’d taken away the first time I placed an arm around his shoulders in comfort, the first time he’d laughed at my inept attempt at humour. The tea we’d shared in my quiet room, the comfort he’d known cuddled in quilts on the end of my sofa before the fire, studying, working on a Charms essay, talking about the Chang girl, how pretty she was, how he wished he could be more brave with her, less tongue-tied.

A hand on my arm startled me, and I jerked out of my thoughts to see the adult Harry beside me. He pointed up as the room around us began to swirl with a rising mist, and I separated myself, with some difficulty, from the scene before me and, a moment later, found myself again in my quarters, facing a grown-up Harry Potter.

An eerily calm Harry Potter.

Had I expected him to turn on me? To boil over with the rage he must surely be suppressing? 

“I just need you to listen for a while,” he said. “Let me say my piece.”

I took back my wingchair as he settled on the sofa. He didn’t bother asking if I wanted tea, nor did he move into the kitchen, but instead conjured a Hogwarts tea service, steaming and set for two.

“I asked Winky to have this ready,” he explained as he poured. “The headmistress could conjure this but my teacups never match.”

I smiled tightly and accepted a cup from him.

“What else do you know?” I asked as I watched him take his time preparing his own cup.

He put his cup down and stared at me thoughtfully before speaking.

“I’ve watched this memory a dozen times already,” he said at last. “I even – I even watched it with Hermione. She gave me some important perspective and – well – honestly, she was the one who suggested I bring it here and watch it with you before asking you for an explanation. She seemed to think I’d learn quite a bit from watching you relive the memory. She was right.”

I didn’t say a word. I had no idea what to offer up here, what words to say. Apology? Excuse? Explanation? Diversion? 

“I understand why you did it,” he said, without preamble. “You were Dumbledore’s man, weren’t you?”

I stared at him and answered honestly, and with some difficulty.

“I was.”

“Greater good and all that,” he said with a tired smile. “That’s why I left you there to die. Severus Snape or the rest of the Wizarding world?”

“You thought I was already dead,” I corrected him. 

“Yeah, but I didn’t take the time to check, did I?” he said. “But I don’t beat myself up over that anymore.”

We sat there for a drawn-out moment, staring at our cooling tea.

“Alright,” he said at last. “Here’s what I want. I want you to start at the beginning and tell me the entire story, and then I’ll decide if I want you to undo what you did. And if I decide I want that, I’d like you to commit to it now – to promise me you’ll do it.”

“Restore the memories I Obliviated?” I asked, unable to hide my incredulity.

“Yes. That. Exactly that.”

He looked as serious as I’d ever seen him. He’d obviously made up his mind and wouldn’t be budged.

I hated to admit it but I understood. He had learned only recently that a professor had abused him yet he had no memory of the event. He’d learned that he and I had had a relationship beyond student/professor, a positive relationship. That he had trusted me as a mentor in the horrible year when he’d felt abandoned by Dumbledore, when he lost his godfather, when he learned the truth of the prophecy. 

He’d learned these things. He _knew_ them to be true. But without the associated memories, he had no emotional connection to them.

“Potter – Harry.” I had no idea what to say to him. “If you want to know – if you want to understand what happened – how I discovered the abuse….”

He shook his head. “You don’t have to. It had to have happened during Occlumency,” he said. “Lockhart – ” He made a pained face. “Shit – I try. Merlin, Snape. I _try_ to believe it. I mean – intellectually – I know he was a fake. He tried to Obliviate Ron. It’s certainly no stretch that he fucking did whatever he wanted and then just Obliviated his victims. But I don’t remember – none of it. I mean, I remember the detentions. He’d just prattle on and on about himself and his adoring fans. He tried to be my friend but I hated all of it.” He bit his lip, and I was acutely reminded then of the boy of fifteen. His voice lowered to just above a whisper. “How could something like that happen at _Hogwarts_?”

“You were very tired that day – and less defiant than usual,” I began. I didn’t answer his question – there were a thousand answers, but none of them acceptable. “Umbridge had you in detention the night before and you were behind on your homework. You stood there seething as I told you to prepare your mind and as I lifted my wand, you dropped your arms to your sides and just gave up. The spell was already on my lips and I fired it off with more malice than usual, angry at your weakness. It was all too easy to rip through your memories, to skim off all of those that rose to the surface with your anger and fear. But I wanted something more – something that would make you _want_ to defend your mind. I admit that I pushed too hard, pushed against a darkness on the edge of your consciousness. I was relentless – I knew it was something dark and unpleasant but thought you yourself had tried to forget It, or hide it from me, by pushing the memory into a far corner of your mind.

“In the end, it wasn’t difficult at all. The memories came bursting forth into your consciousness and we saw them together as they played out. I actually dropped my wand and retreated, stunned beyond words. And you – you stood there, gaping at me at first, and then you charged.”

Potter had been watching me as I spoke, mouth parted, listening closely. I could almost hear his heart beating, much faster than normal. He started at my last words, eyes wide with surprise and disbelief. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he held his tongue.

“You attacked me with your fists and I caught your wrists and held them while you flailed and squirmed. I was too shocked myself to do anything but try to hold you off, but when you succeeded in wrenching yourself free, you ran for the door and I quickly warded it, locking you in the classroom.

“You screamed at me – accused me of planting the memory. Called me disgusting and perverted. When I wouldn’t let you leave the classroom, you collapsed into a corner and sobbed. You were like a frightened animal, and absolutely inconsolable. I was out of my element. I had no idea what to do next but knew in my gut that I would have to cause you even more pain that evening.

“I approached you cautiously, then lowered myself to the floor. I kept a respectable distance between us and you tried to press yourself even further into that filthy corner of the Potions classroom. I’ll be honest – I wished I was anywhere but there, that it was anyone in the world but me that had seen what I’d seen in your mind. But I had to know if it was real or another little gift from Voldemort. And the only way to know that was to get inside your mind again.

“‘I should get Albus,’ I’d muttered then, and that name had drawn an immediate reaction from you.

“‘No! No – don’t. Don’t tell anyone. Please.’ 

“We stayed like that, each of us sitting on the floor, ten feet of space between us, for a long time. When your shoulders stopped shaking, you looked up at me. You told me it wasn’t real. You accused me of putting those memories in your head to torture you. You swore it never happened – that you hated Lockhart, but he never touched you. You never touched _him_.”

I stopped. I could see the shadow of Potter in the corner of that room. I could hear the echo of his pleading voice. “It’s not real. That didn’t happen. It never happened. You – you put those memories there. You planted them. You made me _see_ that. Lockhart didn’t – he never…”

The grown up Harry Potter reached over and touched my arm. “Go on,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “Finish it.”

My tea was cold and forgotten but I still clutched the cup. I set it on the sofa table with a shaky hand. 

“I didn’t give you time to think. I knew what I had to do and you were in no position to prevent it. I pointed my wand between your eyes and whispered the spell again.

“‘Legilimens!’

“This time, I knew exactly what I was looking for, and exactly where to look for it. The traces of Obliviation were there, the remnants of memories attached to the first, unanchored, unrecallable. Lockhart’s method was crude – a scrambling of the threads of memory and then shunting them off to a seldom-used sector of the mind. It could not have been Voldemort who created this mess – he would have been incapable of such sloppy magic. 

“Sloppy – yet effective. At least for the vast majority of witches and wizards who would never have their minds raped by a Legilimens.

“I was now convinced that what I had seen was real. That Lockhart had used you – forced you to perform a sexual act – then threatened you and altered your memories. It made me sick, and I had no idea how to deal with you. We had nothing but hate and animosity between us at the time. You didn’t trust me. You trusted almost no one then, save your friends. But I knew I had to get through to you, and that whether you liked it or not, I had to tell Albus. 

“I made the decision to speak to you as a teacher and not a friend. You would not have accepted comfort from me at the time, so I spoke to you in the same tone of voice I always had. It may seem cruel to hear it now, but I think it reassured you in a way. I was evil and hated, but I was a known quantity.

“I told you that you were being an idiot. That I would have no reason to plant something like that to torment you when I had much easier ways of tormenting you at my disposal. That Lockhart was known for his memory charms – that that final botched charm had landed him in his current place of residence. And I asked you to study the memory, painful as it was, to recall it and try to recall the hours before, and the hours after, and to examine those and determine if they felt real, full of the detail of an actual event you witnessed, and not something foreign planted in your mind.

“I think I sat on the classroom floor for more than an hour, watching you and waiting. I kept a kettle and the basics there, as I spent quite a bit of what should have been my free time in the lab and, in the end, you agreed to my offer of tea. I let you go back to your dorm at nine o’clock, and instructed you to return at seven the next day, with your books and homework.”

And here I paused again, as the retelling of the story had carved a pit in my stomach and exhausted me emotionally. I had always detested Lockhart and thought his punishment should have been more than spending the rest of his life at St. Mungo’s. Albus and I had visited him there a few weeks after all of this came to light and ensured that he would not recover, that he would remain confused and docile. Predators like Lockhart don’t strike only once, and have decided patterns and preferences, but I could find no specific memories in his mangled mind of sexual abuse of minors. Nevertheless, I wanted very much to end his miserable life.

Across from me, Potter was very quiet. 

“You saw it,” he said as I composed myself, poised to begin the rest of the story. “What he did to me.”

“I saw it briefly that first night,” I said. “As the memory played out, you managed to throw me out of your mind.”

“It was only the one time, then?” he asked, as if a single act of abuse was easier to accept than a series of assaults. I suppose in actuality it was, but it was still unforgivable. His ability to keep a level head in times of crisis, crucial to a successful Auror, was beginning to falter but he seemed more human when the cracks began to show, more the Harry Potter I remembered.

I frowned. “Over the next couple months, I doubled down on your supposed lessons. You came to my office three evenings a week. It became a refuge for you of sorts. A quiet place where you could catch up on your other studies. I left you alone for the first hour and a half so you could do your course work, and then – well, and then we would talk. I encouraged you to examine your mind and to piece together everything you could about those detentions with Lockhart.”

“I know I had at least one,” Harry said. “But Merlin – who remembers all their detentions, anyway?”

“You had two. I checked the records and your memories at the time supported that count, once your memories were restored and you sorted through them properly. You recalled some inappropriate touches, not sexual, but beyond the familiarity of a teacher and his student.”

“All right – good. I guess.” He smiled at me weakly, then pulled his feet up on the sofa and circled his arms around his knees. I’d seen him sit this way many times on the comfortable chairs I’d conjured for us in that Potions lab, and the stab of remembered intimacy tugged at my heart. “Look – you have to tell me now, Professor. What did – how bad…?”

How does one answer that question when a grown man sits before you, the injured child still lurking within?

“Pot – Harry.” I steadied my nerves. As horrible as it had been dealing with the abused and tormented child, it was somehow more difficult to sit here with an equal, an adult who owned the experience I would be forced to relate. But he waited expectantly, nervously I am sure, and did not speak, allowing me the time I needed.

“There was what I saw during that Legilimency invasion, and there was more – the rest of the memory that plagued you until I removed it again two months later, on the night we just witnessed together in that memory. What I actually saw was the prelude to the act he forced you to perform - you were on your knees in front of him, his desk at your back. His robes were open and his flies undone. His – he was exposed and you were recoiling, but his hands were on your shoulders, holding you in place, and his wand trained on you. He was threatening you – though his tone of voice was the same as always. He told you that if you didn’t do this, he would give detention to your friends instead. He seemed particularly interested in Miss Granger.”

Potter dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “That would have worked. Fuck, Severus. How stupid could I possibly have been?”

It was the first time he had called me Severus, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

“It is psychological coercion. He made you feel as though you had a choice – but only a choice between two reprehensible options.” I had read a half-dozen Muggle books on the subject while Potter had been in my care. I could still quote the references, still remember the central tenets. “You weren’t stupid. You were twelve years old and blameless. We, however, had admitted a sexual predator into Hogwarts.”

What could you say in response to that?

“I don’t think I need to know any more about what he did to me,” he said after a few moments of silence. “I’ve had training in this, you know. On working with victims of sexual assault. And experience. I worked on the Tornadoes case last year. Those school girls were being blamed for the assault because they were such ardent fans – going to all the games, waiting outside the locker rooms.”

“You were no more to blame than they were,” I said. 

“What about Lockhart, then?” he asked. “He’s still in St. Mungo’s. I checked after I found that memory. He’s no better than he was – worse, really.”

I smiled wryly. “Albus and I took care of him,” I said. “Went to visit him and brought him a little potion. Have you heard of chemical castration?”

“Muggles do it,” he said, staring at me in surprise.

“Wizards do, too. Certain wizards, anyway. And unlike Muggle treatment, it only takes one potion.”

He was looking at me with different eyes now. He was assessing me, measuring me against a standard or an image he’d held in his head for a long time.

“You really did that.”

“I did. Without hesitation. I also searched through all of the detention records for the year and pulled out every detention record served in Lockhart’s presence.”

His face fell. “Not Hermione – or Ron….”

I shook my head. “He had a definite pattern. He didn’t assign many – one every five or six weeks. He favoured Friday nights, and liked to work late. Four third-year girls. You were the anomaly – and the last, as far as I could tell.”

“But you don’t know if he – if he did anything to the others.”

I shook my head. “I believe he did – that he must have. But there is no proof.”

Potter untangled himself from the sofa and stood. He moved over to the window and stood before it, looking over the moon-bathed grounds. “We should have been doing background checks years ago.”

“During your years at Hogwarts, you had Death Eaters, a werewolf, a man possessed by Voldemort, an insane Ministry employee, a half-Giant, a fake seer and Merlin knows who else as teachers. It’s a wonder you learned anything and survived to adulthood.”

He turned and faced me, studying me for so long I grew uncomfortable.

“There’s a part of me that wants those memories back,” he said at last. “No – hear me out. It’s not what you think.”

What did I think? That it was horribly foolish to restore a traumatic memory, to restore the emotion around an event, when just the knowledge of the event is enough to cause severe distress?

“I want to remember _us_ ,” Potter said. “I want to see you helping me with my homework. I want to see someone comforting me, telling me it’s going to be alright. I want to see _you_ doing that. I want to see you giving a shit, Severus. I want to see how it _changed_ you, because the Severus Snape I knew back in Hogwarts was an unmitigated bastard who would do anything to belittle and humiliate me. I just can’t reconcile it. What I see on your face and hear in your voice in that memory when you’re talking to Dumbledore. The other part – that part – it’s horrible. Unthinkable. But I really don’t want to live it again.”

“No, you don’t,” I murmured. “But you can’t have one without the other.”

“I know.” 

I realised that he’d come to this meeting tonight prepared. He’d had weeks to sort through it all, intellectually, at least. To accept that the memory was legitimate. To work out the relationship we had shared. To put it into context with that horrible year in his life. He’d gone over that memory from every angle, had studied it with the emotional context of his grown-up self. 

Abuse wasn’t new to him. He’d spent his childhood with an abusive family, had been pummeled by his cousin, verbally abused by his aunt and uncle, emotionally abused by the lot of them. Abuse he could understand, if not accept.

But kindness? Understanding? An adult standing up for him, caring for him? Believing him? 

Something came to me then, the memory of Potter desperately trying to warn me that Voldemort had Sirius. Held prisoner by Umbridge and her squad of inquisitors, _believing_ that his godfather was in danger, he was desperate enough to tether hope to me.

It had all come crashing down on me that night.

“What?” he said, moving toward me, looking at me with concern. “What are you thinking about?”

“The night you lost your godfather,” I answered.

He sat on the edge of the sofa and regarded me silently. 

“I spent the next evening drinking an entire bottle of scotch. I made myself ill. I’d failed to anticipate how far you would go to try to save him. But I realised that if I hadn’t taken those memories away again, the Dark Lord would have known everything – so thoroughly was he able to penetrate your mind. Seeing you there – with Umbridge – I knew it would never have happened under my watch. No, it would have been so much worse in the end if I hadn’t been there to be headmaster that last year. So much worse for the Wizarding world.”

“The greater good,” said Harry with a sigh. “I’m so fucking tired of thinking about that.”

I laughed. Potter cast worried, tired eyes on me as I Iaughed again. I laughed until I was nearly crying. Laughed at the impossibility of all of it, and the improbability of Potter and I being the only ones left to retell the ill-begotten tale. 

“I thought I wanted that relationship back,” Potter said. He’d watched me, arms around his knees again, a vague smile on his face, until I’d regained some control. “I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, about getting to know you like that again. You know – filling in those empty places in my life.”

“You don’t need that now,” I pointed out. “I believe you filled those empty places by being a parent yourself.”

“I know.” Harry laughed. “Well, I know because Hermione already told me that.” He grinned at me. “She really is a brilliant witch, you know, and the perfect friend.”

I acknowledged the truth of that with a nod. I’d known such a witch once, such a perfect friend. “You prefaced this conversation by saying a part of you wants those memories back,” I noted.

“Yeah, I did. So you’re wondering where I was going with that, right?”

“No, I’m wondering what exactly it is you want from me.”

“Same thing,” he said. “Well, I suppose…I suppose you could share some memories with me. At your discretion, of course. Some of the more pleasant ones.”

I shook my head. “None of them were entirely pleasant for you,” I said. “Don’t forget what it is that drove you to me.”

He looked down at his hands, tense around his knees. “Look - Hermione’s hooked me up with someone. A therapist in London from the States who deals with the magical community.”

I closed up at that. I’d been stupid not to see it – that he was here under orders, or at least at the suggestion of a mind healer. 

“It’s not like that,” Potter said before I could say a word. “I just wanted you to know – that I’m not avoiding dealing with it. I am. I just don’t – I don’t want it to get in the way of anything else. It’s pretty easy to keep it in a box, without the actual memory of it, but she wants me to lift the corner of that box lid – that’s what she says – and look inside. She gave me the idea of at least asking you to describe what you knew about it – the – that detention.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I did that,” I noted.

He paled. “I know you did. Thanks.”

I sighed. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take another step down his convoluted path to recovery. It had been a long week and I was tired and more emotionally drained than I’d been in a very long time.

Perhaps Potter sensed that, because he stood and prepared to leave.

“I know this is complicated – and that it looks like I’m really messed up, and that I don’t really know what I want. And I guess that’s true.” 

I stood then and walked deliberately to the door. “Given the circumstances, you can be forgiven that,” I said. I stood beside the door as he approached, hand on the doorknob.

He stopped beside me and covered my hand with one of his own. I stared at our hands, feeling the calloused touch in a detached sort of way as he spoke softly.

“But I do know I don’t want you as a father figure, or as a mentor.”

I pulled my hand away from his. It was impossible to misinterpret his intention, and surprising only that it didn’t surprise me at all. I didn’t know how to respond – I would certainly need more time to turn things over in my head – time Potter obviously had already had. 

“You know where I live,” I said, clearing my throat and stepping away. “If I’m cleared by the Ministry to stay on at Hogwarts, that is.”

He gave me an amused smile, soft and genuine. 

“I might just have to clear you so I can keep tabs on you more easily,” he said, then he stepped outside the door and went on his way.

I watched him walk down the deserted corridor. His gait was one of a man who’d had quite a good day and was whistling all the way home.

I wanted to close the door and think “Happy Riddance” but instead I watched him until he turned the corner and thought his arse in those denims looked very fine indeed.

Chapter 5

There’s a great gulf of time and experience between fifteen and twenty-nine, even more so when one is Harry Potter.

At fifteen, the boy had been a boy still. Hormones burgeoning in the middle of a fight for his very life. He’d been infatuated with a girl, and desperate for an adult to be honest with him about what was happening around him, about the decisions being made that would ultimately affect how he lived, and died.

At seventeen, when he’d bent over my dying body, honoring my last request to _look at me!_ , he was a changed person. Innocence lost, if ever he’d had it; he was weary, and desperate, and, most of all, determined.

At nineteen he was an Auror candidate with a young son.

When his friends were courting and getting married, and then having children, he was sending his son off to Hogwarts. Secure in his Ministry position, a graduate of the school of hard life, finally living in his own flat, and with more free time on his hands than he’d ever had, he started looking for something more.

Revisiting old memories wasn’t the best way to forge a new beginning, especially given that what was discovered pulled him down and backward, but ultimately, it led him to me.

He later admitted that he’d become obsessed with me in that godforsaken memory. Detached as he was from the ability to feel that the abuse actually happened to him, despite believing that it did, his emotional response was to me, rather than to Lockhart. It had been all too easy to find a way to see what I was like a dozen years after he left me drained on the floor of the Shrieking Shack.

Granger thought Harry might accept it all better if he remembered the abuse, and urged me to discuss this with him.

She told me so after the book release party, when Potter was outside talking with some school friends. Potter hadn’t forgotten, and sent me the formal invitation when it came. I agreed to meet him there, and he waited outside for me, and we walked in together.

She was tired but exhilarated. Riding high on the elation of having seen a long project to a successful completion. The book was well received and most of the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix had come out to celebrate its publication. 

I knew she’d seen the memory and I knew she had to have counseled Harry against pursuing me. Let sleeping dogs lie, she’d probably said. Or sleeping dragons. Or coiled snakes.

When I returned to my quarters that evening, I extracted the memory of Harry’s reaction after I’d uncovered the memory, in its entirety, and I bottled it up and owled it to Hermione Granger-Jordan.

I received it back by return owl a week later with a short note.

_Point taken. I’ll let it be._

I took a research holiday in Germany, and didn’t see Harry again until two months later, when he owled me and asked if I’d go to St. Mungo’s with him.

I didn’t have to ask him why.

Lockhart, free of cares, and with all the time in the world on his hands, seemed to have hardly aged. He wasn’t yet fifty, and they dressed him in lilac and turquoise and periwinkle blue. The healers pampered him, in all his childlike innocence. I hated him nonetheless, and we watched him from the window in the door to the ward for fifteen minutes before Harry turned away.

“He doesn’t deserve that treatment,” he said.

“No, he doesn’t,” I agreed. “But would he have any regrets if he were rotting in Azkaban? Would he repent for sins he doesn’t recall? Would the Wizarding world be a safer place if he were there?”

He shrugged, not in the mood for reason or logic.

“With how badly he fucked up his own brain, I think you should thank Merlin that spell didn’t hit Weasley,” I muttered.

Harry smiled, and kissed me.

As first kisses go, it was more than acceptable, though Potter, experienced Auror though he was, had quite a lot to learn about kissing. The part I’d remember most, though, apart from that first delicious taste of him, and the oddly tentative confidence he exuded, was that it happened in the Permanent Spell Damage Ward at St. Mungo’s hospital, with Harry’s back solidly turned to the soft-spoken and fair-faced monster who’d stolen his innocence.

It would happen again that evening as we stood in the rain outside the gates of Hogwarts. We’d Apparated back together after sitting on a bench in Kensington Gardens watching the swans in the Round Pond. He’d taken me there – a favorite spot he’d often visited with his godson – and as we sat in the waning sun, I watched the beautiful creatures terrorise children offering bread, and thought them an appropriate metaphor for a man like Gilderoy Lockhart. Later, standing before the winged boars outside the castle, surprised by a downpour that soaked us both within seconds, Potter spread his arms and looked to the heavens through foggy spectacles, and laughed. I pulled him toward me and kissed him, swallowing his laugh until he choked on it and breathed it back into my lungs, buoying me with hope.

Perhaps it was a day of metaphors, as the rain worked to cleanse our hearts and souls and bodies.

We’d developed a rather odd sort of relationship, which should have surprised no one given our pasts and our personalities. Every week or so Potter would pop in to Hogwarts, usually unannounced. He’d help me mark essays, or clean up the lab, then treat me to dinner at the Three Broomsticks if I was of a mind to leave the castle for an hour or two. If it was a weekend night, we’d chase students off the Astronomy Tower, then climb onto a turret and get drunk under the stars. But every once in a while, when the weather was good and I had a Saturday free, we went into London. 

And two months after our visit to St Mungo’s, two months spent honing Potter’s kissing skills and learning the hard angles of the other, pressed against each other in castle turrets and deserted dungeons, we ran into Charlie Weasley in Diagon Alley.

Weasley was walking into Gringotts just as we were leaving.

I think he noticed us both at the same time and didn’t know which of us to greet, or what to say.

We weren’t walking arm in arm, or even hand in hand, though I had held the door for Harry, as I’d reached it first. How he knew – with absolute conviction – that we were together I don’t know. He looked pained and I guessed he still harboured something for Harry, because he directed most of his attention to him.

He owled me later that evening. “It won’t last,” he said, “and I’ll be there to comfort him when it ends.”

Arsehole.

Chapter 6

It didn’t end.

One can take things slowly when there’s no need to hurry. No biological clock ticking away. Neither of us craving more excitement or adventure. He’d been dropping in for six months when he told me he’d managed to get himself appointed to the Hogwarts Board of Governors and meant to pull the school into the twenty-first century before the twenty-second was upon us. He wanted training so the teachers and staff could spot child abuse, and resources to help the students who were victims of it. He was determined to rid the world of the notion that a child’s magic would protect them from danger. Yes, it had saved Potter a time or two from bullies, but it hadn’t saved him from his aunt or uncle, and it certainly hadn’t saved him from Gilderoy Lockhart.

It was a full year since that party for Granger’s book, and she was already conducting interviews for its sequel, the first time he didn’t make it home on a Saturday night.

We’d been playing Wizarding Poker with Minerva and some of the other professors, and it was after midnight when we made it back to my quarters. I sat on the sofa and Harry took off his boots and stretched out beside me, prodding my thigh with his toes until I sighed and let him put his feet in my lap.

“I could stay like this all night,” he said, voice sleepy and relaxed.

“Or you could come to my bedroom and sleep in comfort,” I said as I pushed his feet away and stood. “Though I might not let you sleep very much.”

“Promise?” he said, pulling himself up off the sofa to follow me into the bedroom. 

I’d waited a long time and could have waited a hundred more years if it meant I’d have that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I sucked his cock that night, Harry on his back on my bed, pillows beneath his shoulders, strong thighs pressing against my head. There was nothing in the act that would have reminded him of the picture I’d once painted for him, of his twelve-year-old self serving detention with Lockhart. His cock fit snugly in my mouth, and he wasn’t shy about asking for what he wanted, even urging me on with dirty talk as I masturbated over him once he was spent. I straddled him and he reached for my cock and held it as I came, directing the spurts onto his belly and chest then pulling me down atop him and kissing my mouth that still tasted of him. He was confident despite his inexperience – it was no secret between us that he was a virgin – comfortable in his skin, ready to fall in and follow my lead and let the spirit take him where it would.

I didn’t hurry him. Better to enjoy the small gifts a day brought as I savoured the security of my position at Hogwarts, and the unexpected gift of the burgeoning relationship.

Relationship. Not a word I’d ever have expected to use in a self-description in my thrice-cursed life.

But relationship it was, as evidenced by the extra toothbrush in my bathroom and the chocolate fingers I kept stocked in the pantry. 

As the weeks went by, he was staying over most Fridays, and one night, after brandy by the fire – which he suffered only for my sake – he stood and yawned and stretched and said “You should show me something new tonight, Severus.”

He loved blow jobs, giving them as much as receiving them. He loved when I crowded him close against stone walls, in hidden cubbyholes, far past curfew, rubbing against him, fully clothed, while he pressed against the wall until we came, both of us, fully clothed and panting, like errant sixth-years waking up to a sensual world. He was adept at sitting on my legs, legs bent at angles mine would never entertain, coaxing orgasms from me with dexterous fingers.

But that night I wished there were two of me, to both cradle him from behind and take him face to face, but I was jealous even of myself, and wouldn’t let even my doppelganger share the moment. We were comfortable with each other, and he trusted me as a friend and a lover. Still, I was more selfish than I should have been, yet far more patient than I could have been considering what was on offer, and how much I wanted it.

Since the first time I took a lover, I have craved the experience of being buried bollocks deep in another, of losing myself in the overwhelming pull of desire, forgetting the rest of my scarred and broken body in the all-encompassing surge of power in cock and hips and thighs. Detaching from conscious thought and fear as the vortex sucked me in.

Alone in this most intimate of acts, my partner a mere prop as I wiped my mind clean and emptied myself, I selfishly took what I needed, unconcerned about the pleasure of the other. 

Harry Potter cured me of that conceit long before we came to this point.

Buried in his body, I understood the gift. Restoring my innocence rather than taking his, I lost myself in his pleasure. His moans were my moans, his sighs my sighs. As he urged me on, begged me for more – harder, faster, deeper - I was slave to his desire, hearing only his choked voice, promising me the world – the all of him, every piece, every part, heart and mind, body and soul. He drew out my completion with his own, and for the first time in a lifetime I did not want to withdraw and roll away. 

“I can’t imagine ever doing this with anyone else,” he murmured as we lay tangled in each other’s arms. 

“Nor I,” I said.

I never whispered words of endearment, never stayed wrapped in a lover’s arms. Never promised tomorrows or forevers. Never kissed a lover’s eyes, or laid my ear upon their chest to memorise the beat of their heart.

Never once before that day. And every day since. And every day yet to come.

Chapter 7

In time, Teddy knew about us, and Andromeda, and the Weasleys, and the Hogwarts staff, and the Aurors on Harry’s team. The _Prophet_ picked up the story but, oddly, no one really had much to say about it, though they might have had we been given to public displays of affection. Was it possible that, after all this time, we’d actually earned our peace?

Tired of Harry tripping the Hogwarts wards as he left late at night, Minerva made a place for him at the Head Table, and people grew accustomed to seeing Harry there, beside me, until he was a fixture at Hogwarts, an unpaid member of the staff. I consented to a holiday with Harry and Teddy the next summer at a cottage on the sea in Cornwall, borrowed from one of the Weasleys. We three found common ground in combing the beaches and rock formations, and in the quiet evenings, Harry would read by firelight in the cozy sitting room with his bare feet in my lap while I played chess with the boy. And once, when the moon was new, I consented to tell him a bit about his father, who he’d discovered had been in my year at Hogwarts, and if he deduced we weren’t friends, he didn’t seem to mind at all.

The Weasleys invited me to Christmas at the Burrow that same year. And while I put my foot down at a Weasley jumper, and tried it on only grudgingly for the group photograph, and learned to bring ear plugs to mute the wailing of Celestina Warbeck, I made a point of accompanying Harry every single year after that, enduring hugs and children and horrid new jumpers and an overabundance of holiday cheer, just to prove Charlie wrong.

**Author's Note:**

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